The Task
:
Reflective learning is part of the development of your critical thinking skills. Reflective
learning involves taking a personal experience, looking at your initial gut reaction to it,
and quietly thinking about that gut reaction. It then involves building linkages between
that experience and other similar situations using your reasoning to test the strength of
those linkages. Finally, it involves putting your thoughts out publicly to others, receiving
their feedback, and thinking about how that feedback changes your initial thinking.
In this case, I am going to ask you to reflect on a
public
Facebook page posting by a
university student who wrote, “I no longer fear Hell, I took a course with Professor
[Smith].”
1
Two or three students in each group are going to write a two-to-three-page double
spaced statement discussing whether they think it is right that a student should be able
to post such a public statement in writing or whether alternatively such an action is a
violation of the professor’s rights. You may take either position, but you must take a
position one way or the other and stay with it. You must provide two independent
reasons to justify your position. This two to three-page document must be dropped into
the drop box at 11:59 p.m. the night before the class one week after the assignment is
distributed (i.e., 11:59 p.m. the night before class in week # 11). This portion will be
marked out of 4 marks.
Then, the remainder of the students in each group will have until 11:59 p.m. the night
before the next class (i.e., 11:59 p.m. the night before class # 12) to discuss the
consequences of the position taken in the first part of the paper in terms of
consequences for students, professors, and education at universities as a whole, and
the consequences for other situations where these same rights come into play. In
addition, the second part of the group will provide one positive comment about the
content of the first part of the paper and one area where they think there could be
1
Quotation taken from G. Saad, “Student Criticizing Professors Online: A Right or a Violation?”
2
improvement and why. This second part of the paper may be up to five pages in length,
but no more.
The Marking of the Assignment
:
Four marks will be allocated to the first part of the paper, evaluating how well you
express a clear position on the issue and the quality of the two reasons you provide to
justify your position.
Six marks will be allocated to the second part of the paper. Two will be allocated to how
well you discuss the consequences for students, professors, and education at
universities as a whole as well as to other situations where these same rights may arise
and collide. Part of the grading for this will be on how insightful your discussion is on
this aspect of the paper. Then two marks will be allocated for the quality of the
discussion on the positive aspect of the first paper you identify and the area for
improvement you identify, particularly in regard to your reasoning
